Why don't most health insurance HMO plans charge co-pays for preventative care benefits?

First off— Do you know what the difference is between health insurance and a health plan? There's a fundamental difference, and if you're not totally aware of it, read this.

So, being aware of that difference, you know that there's an incentive for insurance companies to not have their subscribers utilize their benefits. It's like car insurance— You're not really incentivized to use it; i.e. you don't really want to get into an accident and have to utilize your car insurance benefits.

Same with health insurance— You don't really want to get sick: But it does happen. When it does, and you come in for a "sick visit," you have to pay a co-pay (your financial responsibility as a subscriber).

But— When you go in for an annual physical, or if you go in to see the doc for shots or something preventative: Now, that's a different story. That helps insurance companies. That helps them because that helps you stay healthy for a longer period— i.e. you won't have to "cash in" (utilize) those health insurance benefits (i.e. sick visits / visits to the doctor for when you present with a clinical symptom).

What's HIPAA?

HIPAA stands for: "Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act." The acronym is often pronounced— in the healthcare world— as "hip-uh."

The "portability" part— You know how there was a law (an "act") that was passed that allows you to take your phone number wherever you go, whether you change providers from Verizon to Spring to— whatever? Yes, a law needed to be passed for you to be able to keep your cell phone number.

In the same way, a law needed to be passed for you to be able to bring your health data and your health insurance wherever you go: from job to job; from location to location; etc. That's the "portability" part of the act.

The "accountability" part of it involves protecting the information. You have to protect, but so do the medical professionals that work with the sensitive info, like doctors. We have to take precautions to make sure that your personal health data stays that way— personal; and never falls into the public domain.

The consequences of this is that we can't readily and freely talk about your very, very personal issues without first running through procedures that ensures that you are the right person to talk to about these sensitive things. Have any other questions about HIPAA? Send us a msg.

PediaHealth, Policies, Healthcare Law, FAQPediaHealth StaffApril 16, 2017PediaHealthHIPAA, Privacy

How can I schedule an appointment?

There are a number of ways to schedule an appointment with PediaHealth. Most efficient / quickest way to schedule an appointment is to do so online, either by sending us a message or via the Patient Fusion phone app.

Get more info on scheduling.
Get more info on doctor visits (visit types).

What health insurances and health plans does PediaHealth take?

PediaHealth and our physicians accept almost every health insurance available to consumers (Aetna; Blue Cross; Blue Shield; United Healthcare). We're also members of most major health plans (i.e. Health Plan of San Mateo; San Francisco Health Plan) and physician groups, (i.e. Hill Physicians Medical Group). We're also accredited as government providers (Medi-Cal).

What is PediaHealth?

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

PediaHealth, FAQPediaHealth StaffApril 16, 2017

Where is PediaHealth located?

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn't anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.

PediaHealth, FAQ, Contact Information, DirectoryPediaHealth StaffFebruary 16, 2015Contact Information, Maps

Privacy Statement & Medical Disclosure

Your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy, we provide this notice explaining our online information practices and choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used. To make this notice easy to locate, we make it available as a link on our home page, and at every point where personally identifiable information may be requested.

PediaHealthPediaHealth StaffNovember 16, 2011Privacy, Disclosures, Disclaimer, Privacy Statement, Medical Disclosure

Disclaimer

DISCLAIMER: The information contained herein should NOT be used as a substitute for the advice of an appropriately qualified and licensed physician or other health care provider. The information provided here is for informational purposes only.

FAQ, PediaHealthPediaHealth StaffNovember 16, 2011Disclaimer

Experiencing a medical emergency?

It should be obvious to just about anybody that you wouldn't go to a website like WebMd or anything of the sort if you were trying to rectify or resolve a medical emergency.

Any reasonable personable person would know that what they should do is call 9-1-1. So if you are in physical distress— If you are in a medical emergency; if you are in physical danger— then by all means, do what you'd normally do, and call 9-1-1. Call local emergency services. Tell them what you're going through, and stop reading this. We can touch base and get back in touch with each other later.

Remember that this is an informational site at best. We're here as "one big massive flyer" to you, to help get you in the info you will need, might need, and probably do need to navigate through the complex mess that is American Healthcare.